


a place for it to happen

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Las Vegas Aces, M/M, Mild D/s, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 16:56:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20474414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: When he officially becomes Kenny Parson’s manager, after Kenny’s rookie year with the Aces, Bob buys a penthouse on Paradise Road with something really close to relief.





	a place for it to happen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pallidvixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidvixen/gifts).

> Big thanks to the lovely Fandom for Siken mods, pallidvixen for the contribution to RS's recovery effort, and jedusaur for the thorough beta. <3

i. _**a place where i can love you**_

Jack overdoses at seven in the morning.

Kent will think about it, later: Jack swallowing pills in the dark in the next room over while Kent slept. Jack, confused and scared, stumbling into the bathroom. Alone, because they’d decided to get separate rooms.

Who decided that?

Was it a test-run for the years ahead, was it mutual and unspoken, or was Jack just tired of Kent waking him up from nightmares?

Either way, Kent slept through the night. On the other side of the wall, Jack was dying.

*

It’s not like Kent didn’t know that Bob and Alicia are getting divorced.

Jack told Kent as soon as he found out. It wasn’t a big deal, not like it was when Kent’s parents got divorced - no plates thrown at walls, no sobbing in bathrooms; no talk of custody, since Jack was eighteen. Bad Bob and Alicia just lawyered up, Alicia moved into a condo, and they did a joint press release.

So Kent knew, but he doesn’t really get it until he’s in the hospital waiting room, and Jack’s behind a closed door, and Alicia’s standing in front of it because Jack only asked for his mom. Kent can’t see clearly, he might be crying again, but he thinks Alicia looks something other than just sad.

Sad and happy. Like she won the worst prize in the world. She stares them down, both of them, and Kent can feel a line being drawn. She sits like a guard in an uncomfortable chair, and Bob and Kent keep standing, and eventually they go get some coffee.

It makes sense, after that, to go wait for news at the Zimmermann place in Brossard. Bob asks Kent if he wants to wait at home, and Kent shivers, and then Bob’s hand is on Kent’s shoulder and they’re walking out of the hospital and everything is wrong. He looks around and nothing makes sense, like the world went off its tracks.

Kent still went first in the draft, though. And he’s walking beside Bad Bob Zimmermann. He looks into the cameras outside the hospital as blankly as he can while Bob answers questions. Kent refocuses his eyes above the cameras and thinks that everyone respects Bob here. Maybe there’s a certain point in this career where they forget they always saw you half-naked in the locker room, getting chirped by your team.

Or maybe Bob’s just a Canadian national treasure. They did name an island after him.

In the car, Bob mentions that there are bags in the vide-poche if Kent needs to throw up. Five minutes later, Kent’s scrambling at the glove compartment for a bag, but he can’t make himself throw up, even with two fingers down his throat. Bob doesn’t flinch. If there are bags there, it’s because someone _(Jack)_ needed them.

Three days ago, Kent was rubbing Jack’s back, both of them kneeling next to a toilet. At the time, it felt a little like that look on Alicia’s face.

The worst prize in the world.

So he can’t even blame her.

*

The Zimmermann place has three bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. Kent’s been here before, but he wasn’t talking to real estate agents yet, and now he’s struck by how modest the house actually is. The floor’s only heated in the bathrooms. You can only park two cars.

(It’s a place for a family, not a mansion. Kent won’t have this kind of restraint when the money starts rolling in. He wants enough space that he’ll feel normal in it, like at the rink. Room enough to breathe.)

He doesn’t ask for Jack’s old bedroom and Bob doesn’t offer it. The guest room is fine. Kent walks around it, like he’s in a new cabin at summer camp; takes in the plush beige carpet and soft beige wallpaper and wiggles his toes on the warm granite floor in the bathroom down the hall.

In his head there is a map of crying places. He didn’t know his brain could do that, but it can - the bathroom in the hallway’s good, and the corner behind the door in the bedroom. The comforter on the bed is heavy enough that he can crank up the A/C and get under it and stay there until his breathing settles.

It makes him miss his mom, but not enough to call her. There are so many missed calls. He has no idea what she’ll say to him, especially now that he’s in Bad Bob Zimmermann’s house and his next paycheck - his first NHL paycheck - will be more money than she’s ever had. She never liked Jack after he made that fucking let-them-eat-cake comment last fall when she visited, and Jack almost died today, and Kent didn’t put pronouns in any of his calls home this year.

He closes his eyes and presses his nails into the wallpaper, then pushes back on his hands to get away from the beige wall. It makes him stumble.

A part of him expected Jack’s hands to catch him. He turns around too fast and catches himself wondering if Jack’s ever been in the guest room at all.

*

Jack is out of the woods, Alicia says. He’s looking at inpatient facilities for his addiction, and the word _depression_ doesn’t pop up. Bob isn’t saying anything about it, either.

They have to be very quiet when Alicia calls. They make sounds, not words, and the sounds are never questioning. If Kent’s breath hitches at the wrong time, Alicia goes silent, and then she hangs up. Bob looks at Kent in a way that doesn’t fit, then. Like Kent’s a way for Bob to prove something, which is terrifying, because Kent was a point to be won in a divorce before and hated every second.

Sometimes he imagines walking out Bob’s front door and just… walking, mindessly, until he’s in Nevada. Calling a taxi and buying a ticket to Vegas in the airport. Running headfirst into whatever’s coming, just so this part is over.

Kent has a whole week before he’s due in Vegas, though. They don’t need him until then.

Bob chews through his bacon while Kent chews through his toast and then they go to Bell, where they can lace up and face off. That, too, is scary. Bob is a brick wall and Kent’s body is an investment, it’s real estate, a mechanism he’s scared he’ll break before it wears out. Kent’s body is somewhere to bury things that have no place outside, but Bob doesn’t take it easy on Kent. He shakes Kent down, and shakes them loose.

And then Bob holds out his hand to help him up.

Kent won’t cry here. He can take the bruises and he can take the widened perception, the way he’s starting to see the ice in lines of attack, how much better he’s getting and how that takes him further away from the person he was the last time he played with Jack. How he’s moving away from Jack, the same way Jack’s moving away from him.

He would trade all of it except his Aces contract just to switch Bob for Jack pinning him against the boards. They don’t put a name to it and admit they’re training Kent while Jack is out of the picture, giving Kent an advantage.

Playing hockey doesn’t require having your shit together outside the rink. They both need this.

*

Kent always takes the first drink Bob offers back at the house, but not the second or third.

When Bob drinks, it’s almost like on the ice. He moves closer. He shifts Kent with his shoulder, tilts his head to point at a screen, trips Kent so he’ll fall on the couch the way he’d do it in a locker room to have a private word. His hand on the back of Kent’s neck pushes down so Kent sees a replayed hit from the same angle he’d see it on the ice.

It’s not worth mentioning. It’s not. Bob’s hand tightening at the back of Kent’s neck when he’s faltering, Bob’s solidity now that Kent’s weak, the way it makes them both look good, is not something worth bringing up.

Bob is dealing with a divorce. They’re both dealing with the lack of news.

It’s not trust, but it is. It’s weird; it has a sell-by date, and Kent can trust that in a way he can’t trust any promises for the future.

*

The night before Kent leaves for Vegas, they settle in for some serious drinking. Bob lines up a selection of bottles on the coffee table, no glasses. Kent’s not surprised.

There should be toasts for this much fucking booze, Kent thinks. Both Jack and Kent’s dad always downed their first few drinks with a toast to give themselves an excuse. Bob just studies the bottle for a few seconds, then drinks some, and off he goes.

Kent thinks about confidence, real and faked.

He peers into the bottles as Bob passes them over and thinks about Jack coming at him on the ice when they were sixteen, relentless, until Kent stopped being scared of it. And how the bigger fear came, then: that the body he now trusted would be broken, somehow. How he can’t afford to protect it if he wants to really use it.

Maybe Jack, in the hotel room, decided to break his body. Shut it off. It put him through hell - put him in the spotlight, put him in the way of skate blades to the bone and nasty scars and sex that made him sick when it was over. It made chemicals in a way it wasn’t supposed to and then flooded them into Jack’s brain, and even a concussion has a reason, but Jack had to live with the chemicals for no fucking reason at all.

They drink a lot. Almost all the booze on the table.

That’s the first time Bob brings up managing Kent. And later, when Kent’s about to stumble back to the guest room to pass out, Bob pats his head and lets his hand slide down to cup the side of Kent’s face.

Bob’s eyes are closed, though, and they’re so, so drunk.

Kent buries it somewhere he won’t have to look at it, then goes to bed and sleeps. His flight is at six in the morning.

ii. _**the river swum**_

Bob has always been a big fan of Vegas. He grew up on a farm in the prairie, windswept and depressing and very dark at night, and Vegas is the opposite of that.

He used to go whenever he and Alicia had a fight, especially at the start of their marriage and right at the end of it, after he retired and Jack left for Rimouski. The house in Brossard was only ever Jack’s home; Bob and Alicia lived outside of it, together or separately. They gave the architect and interior designer a lump sum, a request for something relatively small and tasteful, and spent the next few months in the U.S., dealing with their own projects. They didn’t check on the progress until it was finished, which they didn’t realize until they arrived from the airport and felt like visitors.

Jack was twelve at the time. He put up some hockey posters in his bedroom and filled it with hockey gear and then stashed bottles under the bed that Bob pretended he didn’t notice were missing.

But Bob grew up on a farm. He’s good at keeping track of things, in case they go missing when he needs them.

Losing Alicia was a lot like that. She was there when he didn’t particularly need to lean on her, and when he did, she was already gone.

So he went to Vegas a lot with his old buddies. Made friends with the franchise guys there, since those are the only people that he can actually talk to. When he officially becomes Kenny Parson’s manager, after Kenny’s rookie year with the Aces, Bob buys a penthouse on Paradise Road with something really close to relief.

Kenny buys it off Bob a month later, and Bob moves to a normal house in Summerlin. 

He likes to drive into the desert some nights, to see the dark and all the stars. To breathe in deep and let the desert-smells and the non-prairie sky of it settle him, a reminder of how far he is from where he started.

Sometimes distance is enough. Bob wouldn’t trade the distance - the actual number of kilometers - between the prairie and Vegas for anything. Whatever else happens, he can’t die on a fucking combine.

*

He keeps tabs on Jack, as much as he can. They’re not close and never were, though they understand each other. Bob used to wonder if the terror of the farm passed down to Jack, like Bob’s jaw or the shape of his hands. He would watch Jack frown in his sleep in the rearview mirror, his small, familiar face grimacing, and wonder if Jack could hear the wind howling through the cornfield.

Did he need the sound of skates on ice, like Bob? To cover up the way those leaves cut the night to shreds?

Or maybe Jack inherited the terror without the cause. Maybe that’s why it attached itself to everything, until nothing at all was safe for his son, not even if Bob was there to protect him. He had walls built for Jack to hide between, put a roof over his head and a stick in his hands, he let Jack have the booze and the distance when Jack moved to Rimouski, even younger than Bob had been when he left home. He gave Jack everything that was useful to Bob, but it didn’t help.

He thinks Jack is growing stronger at college. He doesn’t know for sure. Bob never learned to quantify these things or put them into real words; he doesn’t know how to ask in a way that won’t be answered, “Fine.” But he hopes he’s right.

He hopes that when Jack’s strong enough, he’ll stop punishing Kenny for whatever he thinks Kenny did. For seeing Jack in the place he most hated himself and loving him there, probably.

There are times when the last thing you need is a witness. There are times when you walk out into the night and just keep walking.

*

Kenny is not like Jack or Bob.

If Jack and Bob turn small and rigid when they’re angry or scared, Kenny expands. Bob’s never seen anyone fill a room he doesn’t want to be in the way Kenny does - it’s uncanny, how he sucks up all the air until it chokes out people saying what he doesn’t want to hear.

Bob doesn’t realize that Kenny hates that about himself until they make him captain. He doesn’t figure out that he can puncture it like a balloon, release the pressure so Kenny can contain himself, until they nearly come to blows.

The Aces lose; half the team, led by Kenny, come to Bob’s house to get drunk and maybe hear some sort of wisdom. If Bob was wise, he wouldn’t be here, so he sticks to providing booze and keeping an eye on Kenny.

He sees the way Kenny starts to swell up with shame. How the humiliation turns to anger, and the anger turns on his team, who have never been scared of Kenny before, but they’re about to be. 

Kenny Parson is bigger than all of them. He’s nineteen, but you can see the Hall of Fame photo behind him if you squint; his discarded jerseys in the locker room make you want to hang them up like holy relics, put them behind glass. Everything he does feels like a story you’ll tell someday. And when he’s angry, really angry, it stops the breath in your throat.

People aren’t supposed to be like that. They learn it somewhere.

Maybe, he thinks as he drags Kenny away, it’s like losing yourself in a field. Like you disappear, but in reverse - everything disappears around you because you swallow it up, and what are you left with? A howling.

When Kenny tries to punch Bob upstairs, Bob grabs him by the throat and leans in. He gets really close to Kenny’s ear and whispers, “I’ll hold you here as long as I have to.” He thinks about it, then he says, “As many times as I have to.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

Bob’s not ready for Kenny’s knees to buckle, but he manages to hold Kenny up just fine. Right here, where Bob can keep an eye on him.

If happiness was the goal, neither of them would be in Vegas.

*

Jack reaches out the summer before his senior year and tells Bob that he wants to play in the NHL.

Bob wants to keep it from Kenny, but his heart’s not in it. Kenny’s so gone on Jack that he could probably smell it on Bob the next time they met - Jack is, first and always, their common ground. They don’t care about themselves or each other the way they do about Jack. He’s the place where both their hopes are pinned; the last clean thing either of them are holding on to.

So Bob tells Kenny about the call, and together they find pressure points in the franchise they can lean on to bring Jack to Vegas.

Bob takes the front office guys out for drinks and hints very strongly that he’ll be their next development manager, provided they gave him a reason to stay in Vegas. Kenny starts mentioning his contract renewal and changes of scenery, how he always thought he’d retire from an Original Six team; how he’s weirdly nostalgic for Canada, where he played so well.

Management will make them pay for this, of course. Less if Jack performs well, more if Jack can’t hack it, but they can take it. They’re Bob Zimmermann and Kent Parson. If civilization collapsed tomorrow and two hockey fans met in the wasteland, both of their names would come up. Whatever Vegas tries to do to them, there’s no way to make them less than what they are.

After a couple of weeks, a contract is grudgingly drafted. 

And then Jack calls again and asks Bob to talk to George in Providence, and Bob finds that he can’t say no. Happiness was always the goal, where Jack is concerned.

He doesn’t tell Kenny about it.

*

Kenny doesn’t tell Bob that he’s visiting Jack at college. Bob finds out from Kenny’s Snapchat, right before Kenny turns his phone off, which is something Bob taught him to do if he’s about to get drunk. Bob only calls once, and it goes to voicemail.

Maybe it won’t be as bad as Bob thinks. Maybe Jack was only asking about Providence to keep his options open, and he won’t even fight with Kenny, and Jack won’t say Bob helped him go to Providence just to push Kenny further away, and Kenny won’t be so angry he pulls the air out of Jack’s lungs. Maybe this time Jack will grab Kenny by the throat and bite Kenny’s lips to cut into the anger.

Maybe this time, Bob hopes and dreads, Jack will see through Kenny’s fear of losing him, and it won’t feel like something that can swallow him up. Won’t look like a howl so loud it circles back to silence.

Maybe it’ll look like something to build a life on - a house, a franchise, a place for things to happen at the center of everything else. The promise of a legacy big enough for Jack to lean on if he ever stumbles again.

But Jack never had to learn how to keep track of what’s necessary. He doesn’t understand.

Bob clears his schedule to wait for Kenny.

*

Kenny comes back like a fucking storm cloud. The pressure drops when he walks into Bob’s house, and Bob stupidly looks at the blue sky behind Kenny’s head. He runs through Kenny’s schedule: the flight, the press, the charity thing. He wonders how good Kenny’s been at keeping this contained, what it must’ve cost him.

And then Kenny grabs Bob by the crotch, and Bob grabs Kenny by the neck.

This isn’t a game. Games have winners, and neither of them is naïve: Kenny has nothing left but the hurt pride that Bob’s squeezing the life out of. As long as it’s there, it’ll make room for itself, and anger will flood the space, because anger fills every space in Kenny that’s not useful. And so: Bob’s hand, Kenny’s purpling neck.

And so, because Bob has already committed to managing Kenny, he says, “Let him go. He can’t live with you.”

Bob knows that Jack will eventually find out about this. He won’t lie to himself about that. It doesn’t stop him. He gets Kenny on his knees, forces his mouth open, tries not to enjoy the way Kenny gets smaller and smaller - how he settles into his skin again with his pretty lips around Bob’s dick and Bob’s hand tight in his hair.

He tries not to think about the fact that he could’ve put Kenny on his knees at any point in the past three years, because if he does, he might forgive himself for doing it now. It’s not the sort of thing he should forgive himself for.

When he comes, he makes sure to meet Kenny’s eyes. He holds Kenny there in the loud silence, the gurgling pipes of a three-bedroom suburban house just like the one Kenny grew up in. Holds him on the boring tiles that must be hurting Kenny’s knees, with Bob’s come in his mouth, Bob’s hand combing through his hair.

He makes sure Kenny knows the house is still standing, and so is Bob. He owes Kenny that much; proof that he can’t destroy anything he touches, that his shame isn’t corrosive.

He betrayed Kenny, and he’d do it again, for Jack, but he can do this one thing. He can be this for him - the rock for Kenny’s hard places, the pressure valve so he can function out in the world.

Kenny’s face twists, but he doesn’t cry. It’s not that kind of release.

Bob never finds out what Jack told Kenny at Samwell. Kenny stops asking how Jack’s doing, where he’s going to sign, how the lines will be shuffled when Jack comes to Vegas.

*

A few months later, Bob quietly prices Jack out of George’s budget.

iii. _**the year decembered**_

Jack isn’t sure when he decided to go to Vegas. He’s not sure it was even a choice, since it was the only firm offer he got, but he could’ve waited instead. Played in the KHL or in Europe, and worked back from there.

But he belongs in the NHL. He can’t wait longer than he already has.

Vegas looks weird in daytime, but at night it’s pretty fucking perfect. Not that Jack goes out much - he actually goes out less than his dad does, and Jack would know, since he’s moved into Bad Bob’s house.

That part was definitely a choice. Bob’s really good at making places feel like home.

Jack likes that the team’s comfortable coming over to the house. It saves him from waiting for invitations, and it’s pretty funny how some of the guys keep mistaking Bob and Jack for each other from the side or the back.

And Bob gets involved in Jack’s training as soon as it starts.

It feels like the old times should’ve been.

*

Parse is keeping his distance for possibly the first time since they met. His alternates organize all the team bonding sessions in the city, and Parse goes to every single one, but he doesn’t come to Bob’s house with the guys.

Jack wouldn’t have noticed it when they were kids, but now he knows that Parse’s favorite cheat snacks are in the pantry and a couple of Parse’s flannels are in the clean laundry basket in the basement. Parse probably spent a lot of time here before Jack moved in, which means he’s definitely avoiding Jack on purpose.

He decides that it’s a good thing. Or at least one less thing to worry about on a very long list.

But it bothers him, too. Dealing with Parse up close and personal was at the top of the list, because Jack was sure he’s important enough to Parse that he’d push. He knew it from the first time they really talked in Rimouski. It was obvious enough that it cut through the noise in Jack’s head - the noise was uncertainty, and having Parse’s attention was a sure thing. 

Jack wasn’t comfortable with it, so he’s been trying for years to keep Parse out of his life. He was willing to play in Providence if it would keep him away from Parse and his promises, the way he made himself seem inevitable.

But now he’s in Parse’s city, in a house where Parse literally did his laundry before Jack came, and they only see each other at the rink or at lunch with ten other guys. No one brings up Parse-and-Zimms, either, because the coach tried it in practice and the chemistry was so bad he gave up on it.

At Samwell, Parse told him how dirty he fought to bring Jack to Vegas. Jack told him to get the fuck out of his Haus.

He didn’t expect Parse to stay out of every house Jack was ever in. He didn’t think he could say anything, do anything, to make Parse give up on him for good.

*

There’s also the fact that Jack had to go back into the closet when he signed. At school, everyone knew he might bring a guy home, or they might run into him on a date on campus and his date wasn’t always a girl. They didn’t give a shit, so he stopped giving a shit, too. It wasn’t discussed, thank fuck, but it wasn’t a secret. They chirped him either way.

Bob’s known that Jack’s bi since Jack was seventeen, but he didn’t tease him about guys the way he did about girls. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in Providence, but in Vegas, it does. Bob probably knows about Parse, too. Parse isn’t out with their teammates, and Bob’s not asking Jack about his love life: that’s all the warning Jack needs.

It’s not like the team is any worse about it than other teams would be. They’re hockey bros, and some are more offensive than Jack would like; it’s nothing he didn’t know would happen.

Parse not reacting to the worst of it is a surprise, though. Even in Rimouski -

But in Rimouski, Parse was mostly speaking up for Jack, whenever Jack got fucked up at a party and lost track of who was watching. The only one who knew that Parse sometimes hooked up with dudes was Jack, and that was only because Parse told him; it was something they had in common. It was them against everyone else.

Before Jack went to college, the closest he had to being out of the closet was sitting on the floor in cheap hotels across Canada with Parse, playing fuck-marry-kill about NHL players until Jack could sleep. If that’s the closest Parse ever got, Jack’s starting to see why Parse held onto their friendship for so long. While Jack was getting high-fives over breakfast for his hookups and letting Lardo nix his boring jeans for dates with guys he’d met in class, Parse was here.

Here, where the guys chirp each other about looking gay. Where it’s safe to make it a joke because no one present is the joke.

Jack’s therapist said it would be easier to talk to other queer people, but Jack didn’t think to ask about this. He finished therapy six months before he decided to go pro, so he has no idea what his therapist would say about two men keeping their bodies loose and slightly turned away from a coworker, not talking to each other, having no one else to talk to.

Boundaries are great, most of the time. But solidarity is an impulse, an instinct, and it’s so fucking hard not to make eye contact.

And underneath that, despite the years when he had other friends and avoided Parse for his own well-being, he misses Parse. He used to miss Parse even when they were in the same room, but he could get over it; this is something else.

They were friends. They were too much to each other, but part of it was friendship.

He’s less than proud about some of the things he said. He knew the weight of them and used them as a wrecking ball, but he didn’t know that Parse was alone like this. He didn’t know he was taking anything away from Parse.

*

He sees them.

It’s not the seeing that gets to Jack, though; it’s the hearing. The things Bob says and the curve of Parse’s spine against them, the weight he trusts Bob to support while Bob puts him where he wants. How clearly Jack can read the hockey in both of them, the creaky knees and the shuffle so Bob’s leaning on his good leg and Parse gets some padding under his.

_Can you take it_ sounds surprisingly… intimate, when it’s an honest question. And Parse just tilts his head back into Bob’s hand and takes it, looking grateful.

Parse takes it, and Jack shouldn’t see this.

Bob was the first for everything. _Why not this, too?_ he thinks numbly. He should - he should leave. He can’t watch this.

He makes it back to his room with a throbbing shin. He must’ve bumped into something. He should ice it, but Parse is in the kitchen with Jack’s dad, and -

Jack muffles the sound he almost made. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t recognize it, and things are confusing enough. He laughs, then stops laughing, because it was a little unhinged.

He has to do something, though, so he gets on the floor, rolls over to his back, and starts a set of crunches. Then he does another one, and he doesn’t stop until he can’t move, deaf from all the blood rushing in his ears.

It sounds familiar. A howl.

*

He promises himself he won’t think about it, so he obviously obsesses over it.

He can force his brain not to think of the other person in the scene as his dad, but he can remember every single detail about Parse, and it’s driving him up the wall.

Parse was _grateful,_ Jack’s totally sure of it. He was on his knees because he needed to be on his knees, even if he’s been avoiding the house lately. Did he call ahead? Did he ask for it? Was he desperate, like he used to get before a game, when the guys would all stare at Jack until he went over and settled Parse with an arm around Parse’s shoulders, bent like a bar across Parse’s chest to hold him still?

Is this what Parse actually wanted, back then?

And if he wanted it then, he might still want it now. He was always so fucking persistent about being in Jack’s life; it would make sense that he’d still want this.

Jack never even considered it before, which is probably good. That last year was hard enough when they were just friends; he doesn’t even want to imagine what it would’ve been like if they were fucking, or if they were, like. Boyfriends.

Jesus. They could’ve gotten together so fucking easily. Why didn’t they?

*

He shouldn’t do anything. Obviously.

But what if Parse is lonely?

Jack is, and Jack got to be out for a while. It must be so much worse to have never had that, even if you knew it was temporary. Even if you knew you’d trade it for something else, eventually.

*

He doesn’t actually mean to kiss Parse.

He’s just been thinking about it so much that he forgot it’s all in his head, and Parse doesn’t know Jack saw him like that back in September. Parse hasn’t even looked Jack’s way, but when he does, in a hotel elevator after a 6-2 loss, looking like he used to, Jack grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him in.

Parse kisses him back for a second before his eyes snap open and he shoves Jack so hard he hits one of the mirrored walls. Jack stays there, confused and increasingly mortified, as Parse wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“I-”

“Are you so fucking full of yourself that you think I’ll fall at your fucking feet?”

“But with Bob-” Jack hears himself say, which is horrifying. He wants to hit the emergency brake and climb up through the rescue hatch just to get away from this. Parse looks like he wants to punch him in the face, but then he stops and frowns.

“Did he tell you?” he asks, like they’re just having a conversation, not talking about how Parse is fucking Jack’s dad.

“What? No! I just. I live there, and I saw-”

They sit with that for a second.

And then, amazingly, Parse laughs. It’s not even his mocking laugh, it’s the one that means he’s actually amused, and Jack stares at him as all the air is sucked out of the elevator. This is the worst thing that could’ve happened, other than his dad or Parse seeing him in the hallway that day. But then it turns out there _is_ something worse.

Parse says, “Whatever, man. At least I can come to the house now, I was getting tired of sneaking around like a fucking teenager. You just gotta tell Bob first. I’m not gonna be the one to tell him his son’s a fucking voyeur.”

“You said it wrong,” Jack croaks. Parse raises an eyebrow. “Voyeur. You said it wrong.”

The elevator finally, finally dings and lets them out. Parse steps into the hallway first, then looks back over his shoulder to where Jack still hasn’t moved, lightheaded.

“Grow the fuck up, Zimms.”

Jack closes his eyes so he won’t have to see his own reflection on all sides, takes a couple of deep breaths. The doors slide closed again; someone’s called the elevator to another floor. He doesn’t want to open his eyes again, doesn’t want to see himself right now, so he clenches his fists against the mirror and waits to be let out.

There’s no place for him in Vegas if Parse doesn’t want him there. Not in Bob’s house with Parse in it, not on Parse’s team that didn’t want Jack at all. Not in the empty husk of a dream Parse used to have for them before Jack killed it. He did that, and then he came here anyway, a third-liner no one knew what to do with.

He’ll call George from his room. He’ll ask his dad to read the contract she’ll send them and get the trade done, even at a loss. He can be in Providence next month, if he’s lucky, and luck was never the problem.

The problem is in him. He carries it around.

He needs to put this shame down somewhere else before the old nightmares start again - the howling wind and the leaves cutting the night to bite-size pieces that he doesn’t want to eat, but does, little bites of darkness that taste like cold dust.

He doesn’t know why he dreams that. He’s never been in a cornfield in his life, but it’s the most terrifying thing he can think of, to have nowhere to hide from himself and no end to it in sight. Just more darkness that sticks in his throat; always more night to swallow.

**Author's Note:**

> (soundslikepenance on tumblr)


End file.
